Second Chances

Prologue

‘YOU MISSED YOUR TURN,’ SHE SAID.

He kept going, along the village’s single street and out the other side, taking the coast road at the fork. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

‘What?’

‘Wait and see.’

She sat back, smiling. She loved surprises, and he was good at them.

Every time he left her Dublin apartment to take his long road home she found a treat hidden somewhere – her favourite chocolate, a framed photo he’d taken of the two of them, a bar of the seaweed and loofah soap she was addicted to.

Once he’d replaced her bookmark with two tickets for an upcoming play he knew she wanted to see.

She planted her feet back on the dashboard and admired her blue toenails. They’d been on their way home from the beach: when she wriggled her toes she felt the not unpleasant graininess of sand between them. His car was always full of sand. She lifted a hand to lick her palm, and tasted salt.

In the hedgerows she saw dots of orange among banks of bright green spears.

Montbretia getting ready to bloom, Damien had told her when she’d asked.

Few more weeks, it’ll be like the hedges are on fire.

Beyond was the patchwork of fields, some with animals, others with crops, and past that the shimmering turquoise ribbon of ocean that travelled along with them, the black shapes of wheeling gulls in the blue sky above it all.

A week before Christmas, a month after they’d met, in bed with flu and unable to cross the country to see him as planned, she’d answered a persistent knock at her apartment door to find him standing there with a large Thermos.

He’d made the green bean, miso and noodle soup she loved, and driven three hours to bring it to her.

Was that the moment – aching and feverish and shivery, hair a mess, not a scrap of make-up, wearing old comfy PJs she’d never have dreamt of letting him see her in – she’d fallen in love with him? She thought it was.

And now it was the last week of May, their sixth month together, and the weather had been unseasonably warm for the past few days, and they’d been swimming – or rather he’d cut through the water like the half-fish he was while she’d bobbed about closer to shore.

He kept threatening to teach her to swim; she kept promising to learn.

When we’re living together, she always added in her head.

Although nothing had been said, no promises given, no plans made beyond their next encounter, everything, it felt to her, was pointing towards a life together: the only unknowns were when and where.

The when part would happen, but not just yet – six months of only seeing each other at weekends was probably not long enough for that particular conversation, impatient as she was for it.

The where part was a little more uncertain.

Dublin was the only home she’d ever known, while he’d grown up in the little west coast village she travelled to every other Saturday to stay two precious nights and one full day with him.

The village, with its single street, consisted of a church, a chemist, a primary school, two pubs, a chipper, a café that opened when its owner felt like it, a tiny hair salon, a butcher’s, a small supermarket with a post office tucked away at the back, and a hardware shop that was bigger than all the other premises put together, selling everything from lawn mowers to kettles to table lamps to birthday cards.

Between the shops were houses, and beyond the street more houses, gradually petering out as the countryside took over. The population, according to Damien, was around seven hundred.

But despite its small size, or maybe because of it, the place was very friendly.

Everyone smiled at her on the street, everyone said hello, even children, and she loved that the bigger town half an hour away – still tiny in Dublin terms – was known simply as ‘the town’, as if it was the only one in Ireland, or the only one that mattered.

If Damien asked her to move here, she would.

She’d live anywhere with him. He’d move for her too, she was sure of it, but sometimes when he came to Dublin it felt like he was trying on clothes that didn’t quite fit.

He was a son of the village, known by all, perfectly content here.

She couldn’t uproot him, not when she was willing to relocate.

It would be a massive change, after having everything on her doorstep in Dublin, but doing it for him, and to be with him, would turn it into something great, the best kind of adventure. She’d never been afraid of taking chances, and she wasn’t about to start now.

She’d have to travel for work if she lived here.

Given its size, there wasn’t the smallest chance she could make a living from teaching yoga in the village – but again she didn’t care.

She could look for work in the town; Marian said there was a community centre that might take her in – and maybe she’d organise a weekly class somewhere in the village, just to involve herself in local life.

The school might let her use their hall.

She caught herself then, and smiled. Listen to her, planning their future. He probably wasn’t giving it a thought, not yet. She reached across to lay a hand lightly on his thigh, and he threw her a glance.

‘What are you smiling about?’

‘Nothing.’

He started humming. He was a hummer, always something playing in his head that had to come out. He wasn’t in perfect tune, but it didn’t bother her. She loved the happiness in him, the way he grabbed each day with the enthusiasm of a small child, and made the most of it.

She studied his profile as he drove. His eyes were between blue and grey, depending on the light.

His nose had been broken in childhood from the accidental whack of a hurley, so now it had a small bump in the bridge that she decided gave it character.

His mouth was wide, his cheeks ruddy and burnished from year-round swimming.

Little creases radiated from the outer corners of his eyes.

And when he smiled, which was often, she melted.

It was a thing of glory, a crooked grin with a kind of bashful quality to it that sent happiness into all areas and transformed his face into an adorable thing that she wanted to press between her hands and kiss fervently – and she did, anytime they were alone.

His smile caused butterflies to rise inside her and flutter madly.

His smile had been the reason, on the night they’d met in a busy Dublin pub, she’d accepted his offer to carry her tray of drinks back to her table.

In the city for a friend’s stag party, only his third time ever in the capital.

‘Complete culchie,’ he’d said, laughing, and something – the laugh, the merriment of him, the careful way he’d set down the tray and said a cheerful hello to her gang – something about him had found her tapping her number into his phone when he’d asked.

She’d been certain she wouldn’t hear any more from him – stag parties tended to blot out memories – but she had heard, late the very next morning.

It’s the culchie, he’d said. A bit worse for wear, and in dire need of food, and their lunch date in the little Italian bistro she’d directed him to had lasted three hours.

In that time he’d told her he was a chef, still living in the seaside village where he’d grown up, and working in a busy restaurant in the nearby town.

He had an older brother and no sister, and he was hopeless at DIY, and his favourite ice-cream was mint chocolate chip, and he loved music but couldn’t sing, and he’d learnt to swim before he started school.

They clicked. He made her laugh. He seemed impressed that she was a yoga teacher, and asked lots of questions about it. Her vegetarianism amused him – he himself, he told her, was a proud omnivore, nothing he wouldn’t try.

By the time he was leaving, she was smitten. When he leant in to kiss her goodbye her heart leapt, just the brush of his lips on her cheek leaving her wanting more, much more, and she couldn’t wait to see him again.

He’s the other side of the country, her friends had said, when she’d reported on the lunch.

Do you really want to do a long-distance thing, Lydia?

The answer to that, of course, was no. A long-distance relationship was definitely not what she wanted – she’d rather meet him every day, or at least every second one – but she’d take it over never seeing him again, and so it had begun.

Over the following weeks of long phone calls and snatched weekends – happily, both their work schedules gave them Sundays and Mondays off – they’d nurtured the precious thing they’d coaxed into being, and infatuation had quickly grown into love, and here they were.

‘Now,’ he said, turning down a lane on the coast side of the road. It was a mix of gravel and packed earth, barely wide enough for two cars to pass, a strip of grass running along its middle. Was he taking her to another beach, after just having left one?

He wasn’t. They rounded a bend and the lane petered out beside a set of rusting metal gates on the left.

Damien pulled up at the gates and switched off the engine, and Lydia looked out at a big old ivy-covered two-storey house set at an angle to the lane at the end of a short curved gravel driveway.

The gates were closed, briars and more ivy clambering along the dry-stone pillars that anchored them.

She saw gaps in the roof tiles of the house, and greenery climbing from chimneys, and glass missing from several of its windows.

The front door, black paint peeling, had a broken fanlight above it.

Sad, she thought, to let such an impressive building go to rack and ruin like that.

‘I need you to come with me,’ Damien said.

She turned and saw the excitement in him, the shine in his eyes, the smile that was on the cusp of forming. ‘What are you up to?’